The role of interjections in discourse
Lombela-Poyo Tshomba
DipTELF
Kananga
Desde hace tiempo los lingüistas han considerado
a las interjecciones como una categoría sin importancia, sin contenido de referencia, y, por lo
tanto, casi olvidada por ellos; aquí se trata de
demostrar su verdadera Importancia tanto para el
hablante como para el escucha.
For a long time lingüists have considered interjections as an unimportant category, without referential content. Therefore, they have almost been
forgotten. The purpose of this paper is to show
their true importance both for the speaker and
the hearer.
Depuis longtemps les linguistes ont considéré les
interjections comme une catégorie sans importance,
sans contenu de référence et, par conséquent, ils
les ont presque oubliées: nous essayons Ici de
montrer leur véritable importance pour le locutaire et l'allocutalre.
Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada, Número 6 octubre, 1986, México: CELE, UNAM.
43
Lange Zeit haben die Linguisten angenommen, dass
die Interjektionen eine sprachliche Kategorie
ohne Bedeutung seien, ohne Stellenwert Bezug
auf den Inhalt. Deshalb wurden sie praktisch
ausser Acht gelassen.
Hier geht es darum, ihre wahre Bedeutung aufzuzeigen, und zwar sowohl für Sprecher als auch für
den Zuhörer.
1. INTRODUCTION
Interjections have been long regarded
as a wastebasket category by linguists, a category containing purely emotive words devoid of
any referential content. Consequently they have;
been almost forgotten. For linguists' primary
interest was concentrated upon the description
of sounds and words on one hand and on the other
upon the combination of these words into sentences, trying at the same time to account for
their relationships within sentences. However
with the tremendous development brought into linguistic science, linguists have decided to enlarge their sphere of investigation and take in
larger segments of verbal behaviour, that is to
say, to expand their horizons beyond the description of the sentence in order to explore the
whole mechanism of verbal behaviour which is
known as discourse.
44
At this point it is imperative to formulate the notion of discourse as it should be understood in the context of the treatment of interjections, considering that there is much literature on the market about discourse. Thus, discourse in the present paper will refer to a
stretch of language, be it spoken or written,
analysis of which will take into account, not on
ly various aspects of sentence relations, but also some phenomena such as those under consideration, i.e. interjections, which tend to mark a
certain kind of interaction between people and
to carry quite a wide range of information as
will become apparent later on.
Interjections, though long ignored, have
aroused the interest of some linguists early in
the seventies. Lakoff's article "questionable
answers and answerable questions (1970)" published in 1973 and James's articles "Some aspects
of the syntax and semantics of interjections
(1972)" and "Another look at, say, some grammatical constraints on. Oh, Interjections and Hesitations (1974)" seem to be the only sound discussions about interjections which have been preceded to date.
Lakoff's paper explores in the first
instance the appropiateness of an answer to a
question and at the same time touches upon meaning of those answers prefaced by interjections
such as well and why. James's papers on the other
hand make on investigation of some aspects of the
syntax and semantics of interjections. But in
perspective of the speech act theory, it must be
agreed that a syntactic-semantic analysis of
these utterances known commonly as interjections,
is deemed to be insufficient as their meaning in
the actual discourse tends to change from one
speech situation to another. It is therefore
visable to investigate their communicative functions in speech situations wherein stress, intonation contour and facial expressions, gestures,
in short kinesics come into play.
45
It is my intention in this study to make
an attempt to re-examine the previous studies
and propose a further analysis which might care
to consider different extraneous elements susceptible of accounting for the meaning of interjections acknowledged both by the speaker and
the hearer.
1.1 DEFINING INTERJECTIONS.
By Interjections, traditional grammar
books have referred to a class of words that have
neither referential substance nor syntactical
link to the sentence but serve to express emotion. They are characteristically used in syntactic isolation and are composed of not more
than two syllables. Some of the commonest interjections are: Oh (pain, suprise), Ah (satisfaction, recognition), Uh, er (hesitation), Hurrah
(joy), well) initiating, introducing, resumption)
Aha (agreement), What (astonishment), Ouch
(pain), Goodness (surprise), Why (indignation,
disagreement), Indeed (doubt), etc. To these must
be added some phrases which result from the combination either of two interjections or two or
three words such as Oh God, Oh gosh, Oh dear,
Dear me, Oh bother, Jolly good, What a pity, Bless
my soul, to mention but a few.
46
As this study is set in the realm of
speech act theory, it stands to reason that traditional grammarians' definition proves unsatisfactory and needs reconsideration. Interjections
will be then provisionally defined as pragmatic
operators which establish relations between speech
acts. Provisionally, simply because we feel that
it is rather loose and vague when it comes to
thinking that either the same interjections have
different uses or else different functions happen
to be rendered by the same interjections. Which
makes it differ from the classical semantic use
of interjections. Clearly, the pragmatic use of
these interjections is accompanied by various phonological and syntactical constraints. To account
for the pragmatic function or use interjections
will be often used either in isolation or in a
sen tence-initially followed by a pause and uttered
with a specific intonation pattern. It is this
intonational aspect that will be exploited mostly
in this paper, for the syntactical one has been
discussed at some length by James (op. cit.)
One might ask why it is possible to assign meanings to interjective operators if they
are devoid of any referential substance. The answer is provided by arguing that if we admit that
uttering something like Oh! equates the expression
of a proposition and that when a proposition is
expressed it is always expressed in the performance of an illocutionary act as Searle (1969)
states it, then we may also admit that Oh! refers
to something identifiable, though the utterance
Oh! itself does not have a propositionl content.
I hope to show that interjections may perform a
wide range of i11ocutionary acts resulting from
the use of different intonation patterns -- an
aspect which was neglected by Lakoff and James.
47
1.2. LIMITING THE SCOPE OF STUDY .
With the aim that we would like to shed
some light on previous studies, I will limit myself to considering three interjective morphemes:
Oh, Ah and Well.
So to account for the pragmatic use of
these interjections I exploited the tape-recorded
spontaneous dialogues compiled into a book by
Crystal and Davy (1975). I did not limit myself
to spoken discourse only, I took.a glimpse at the
written discourse as well. And I haphazardly
Chose a collection of FIVE PLAYS by John Mortimer.
These materials have permitted me to
collect instances which contained interjections
to be analyzed. I believe that they would provide
evidence upon which to base a description of interjections.
2. ANALYSIS
2.1. OH.
They are one or two essential points to
bring out about spoken discourse before we undertake the actual analysis of interjections. These
points are closely linked to the relative difficulty of handling spoken discourse as an easily
analyzable piece of language. First, I find
rather embarrassing to delineate with exactness
the boundaries of a sentence within spoken discourse. Secondly there seems to be an apparent
difficulty also in determining the various positions or loci of interjections.
A partial solution to this state of affairs will be to treat temporarily a stretch of
language marked off by tone-units as constituting
a sentence. In this respect it miqht be possible
to say whether an interjection occurs initially,
medially or "finally" depending certainly upon
one's judgement about what may likely be the
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boundaries of the sentence.
To begin with, we would like to consider
the following exchange where the interjection Oh
has been noticed:
A. ...How much does it cost to get in down
the road now?
B.I think it probably is the money for
what you get... I was reading in the paper this morninq a chap he's a director
of a big company in Birmingham and he's
been to America to watch West Bromwich playing in America he's...he's
been to the la...to Oh...the last two
or three world cup... ( Crystal et al.
1975:19).
There is little doubt that Oh in B is a mark of
hesitation used intentionally by the speaker as
he tries to make a decision or choice about what
comes next. Clearly the Oh seems to precede a
definite statement, which is the position "he has
been to the last world cup" no matter the exact
number of times. What is essential in the speaker's eyes is that he makes the hearer understand
and beleive that Mr. X has done Y for n-times but
he is unable to state how many times it was; Mr.
X has certainly been at the World Cup tournaments
more than twice. To perceive the meaning of Oh as
it stands in B, I think it interesting to compare the Oh-type hesitation with what I may call
"true hesitations", that is, hesitations characterised by er (also transcribed as mm or uh )
the omission of hesitation signal.
Let us take the important part of the
sentence:
B1. ... He's been to the la. ..the last
two or three World Cup tournaments.
(1) Uh is the American transcription for er in
British English.
49
B2. . He's been to the la...er the
last two or three World Cup
tournaments.
It qoes without saying that the first
meaning to come out of B. is that the speaker is
trying to remember perhaps the number of times
the person he is talking about has been at World
Cup tournaments. James (1972:162) with regard to
this, points out that the omission of a hesitation signal could be interpreted as the speaker's intention to create suspense inhis hearers.
This is indeed true, but I preclude its possibility to apply in the sentence under discussion.
Whereas B2 would account for a temporary forgetfulness on the part of the speaker as he makes
an effort to remember the number of times Mr. X
has been to World Cup tournaments. A further
possible meaning - which does not concern the
case in point - is one in which the speaker is
deliberately hesitating because he tries to avoid creating a negative attitude in one way or
another.
The reason for this comparison has been
to show the semantic differences that might result from the use of the simple pause or hesitation signal er in the context in which it was
not intended to be used. The choice of these
operators is unlikely to be made at random. It
is, we should think, inherent to the speakers's
intuition as far as the meaning is concerned.
There is, however, another use of OH
inside a sentence which seems to be different
from the one described hitherto. Characteristically, it is preceded by a long pause and is
then said rapidly, while the OH in B has the
tendency to be drawn out and in the sentence
examined it carries the falling tone. Illustrative of the second OH is the sentence:
B. "...about as wide as that and
about thirty thousand have to
50
go out through there you know, I
mean er - OH it's terrible.
(Crystal et al. op. cit. p.23)
The tone carried on OH is rising and
steps down as the speaker passes it on to the
nuclear syllable - terrible - which carries the
falling tone. The meaning brought out by this intonation pattern would indicate that "the speaker
has just remembered" that there is something
rather appalling. In other words, this sentenceinternal OH stands for the underlying proposition
the speaker has just remembered. To corroborate
this interpretation, take for a further illustration this sentence:
A. OH and one pig died because it
ate to much. ( p.40)
Here the position of OH is different,
but the meaning is still the same. OH is sentenceinitial. The speaker, it is said, has been telling B about her family's summer holiday, when
they went to stay on a farm. Her children had
been very much impressed with the pigs and suddenly with a sharp rising tone A remembers that
there exists P (P standing for the proposition)
which mean’s that there is a further point to make
about the pigs. That point concerns the death of
one pig, which constitutes the whole proposition
the speaker S has remembered to express. In such
a context the hearer H could react by uttering an
expression which inspires compassion or shows surprise. In this case the hearer H has shown surprise using the same interjection.
B. OH really!
Obviously, the OH is slightly drawn out just to
indicate that the first prominent syllable starts
there and that the final element of the tone-unit
carries a rising tone which, with great probability may challenge A's information and consequently call on further evidence.
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These are, in fact, some general semantic aspects of the interjection OH which few
people are aware of. However, it has been noticed
that interjections in general, viewed as pragmatic
operators, convey some clearly defined semanticopragmatic information which need to be brought
out. This information is perceived by the hearer
in the form of speech acts being performed while
using interjections. On these grounds, we could
easily suscribe to Searle's thought according to
which "in the case of speech acts performed
within a language, it is a matter of convention
that the utterance of such and such expressions
under certain condition counts as "the doing of
something" (1969:37)." It appears that some difficulty may emerge in the attempt to define these
conditions in a water-tight way. Therefore, I
would tentatively determine by way of examples
some overall meaning that could hold generally.
Let us consider OH in isolation. In isolation, the utterance OH usually stands for a proposition. Take for example the following piece
of discourse between A who is sitting in the living-room watching the television programme on the
return of the American Space Shuttle and B who
enters in the room as the commentary finishes.
A. John, The Space Shuttle has just
landed.
B. OH!
Another situation. Imagine that John is
asked by his father to read the first paragraph
of the text his teacher taught in class. While he
is reading he mispronounces twice a word which
keeps recurring throughout the text. The third
time he gets it wrong and says Oh! Notice that
Oh! could have been uttered by John's father as
well, using a low key of secondary tone five in
order to show either surprise or disappointment
as he stares at the son.
The first point I would like to drive
52
home by giving these examples is that for all
situations falling in this category i.e. the category in which an interjection, by standing
alone, expresses a proposition, it should be
suggested to bear in mind one or two general tendencies about interjections in isolation.
First the utterance Oh (and incidentally
Ah, Well) should be considered as a reaction to
a fact or a situation the speaker has just experienced and secondly this reaction should also
be regarded as a response to that situation. This
argument could be refuted by those who believe
that the primary function of an interjection is
confined to the omission of sounds which express
a feeling of some kind. But in the scope of this
paper as was stressed at the outset, we view an
interjection as a pragmatic operator. As such
the argument is to be taken, for Oh in these two
examples gives the hearer some kind of information or response which may comfort and reassure
A that his intention has been recognised.
Obviously the dialogue consists of two
distinct phrases: giving the information (The
Space Shuttle has just landed) and replying (indicated by a simple interjection). A's question
might arise, however: what would have been implied in uttering the sound Oh? The answer will
by and large depend upon some factor on the part
of the responder's interests. In the first, place,
a more obvious meaning that comes to mind is a
surprise, in which case Oh is uttered with a rising falling tone. The responder, though surprised, shows a certain degree of commitment to the
event and consequently he agrees with A. Usually
in such a context, the responder may have Oh followed by one of these phrases: very good, great,
splendid, etc..But it should be said that the
expression of surprise is often linked to some
bad or good reasons behind it. Here it is due to
the fact that the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia was facing serious problems with their
heatshield and other sophisticated equipment of
53
the craft.
However, uttered on a more falling neutral tone, say tone one, Oh expresses a proposition which would mean that the responder notifies
the speaker that the information is received and
acknowledged as true. In terms of speech functions, both cases may be said to convey one
illocutionary act: agreeing and ultimately may be
paraphrased respectively as:
a) I say (state) to you that,
though suprised, I agree with
what you are saying; and
b) I state to you that
(I take for granted your information
(I concede or agree
(I note what you are saying
Furthermore, if the Oh is emitted with a rising
tone, that is tone 2, the responder is likely to
doubt the speaker's information and seeks confirmation accordingly. And this is the point I have
already touched upon (see p. 7). To put it another way, the responder is "disagreeing" momentarily with the speaker's intention until further
evidence is produced.
On the other hand, the interjection Oh
as it is used in the second situation has its
own peculiarities. Uttered by John, it carries a
blameful function whereas it shows disappointment
when it comes out of the father's mouth. It would
correspond to an expression like "what a pity'.
John's father regrets that his son displays some
memory deficiency, i.e he is not able to remember once for all a bit of information, a correction without difficulty; which may bear out an
evidence according to which his son John might
not be doing well in class.
It must be noted that the set of meanings or illocutionary acts to be assigned to one
54
speech act (here the utterance of Oh) is far from
being exhaustive. For these are generally bound
to appear in specific semant i c/praqmatic contexts.
It might be suggested that the speaker should rely upon the intonation contour which generally
disambiguates the situation. Indeed, intonation
plays an extremely important role in discourse,
but it is less possible to cover all semantic differences extensively. The same intonation contour
may convey a variety of speech functions as may
be noted in the sentences below where the pragmatic Oh used sentence-initially could yield a host
of illocutionay acts.To illustrate the assumption
we are making, consider the fragment of discourse
be low:
C... but there was an interesting programme on these grounds the way it
showed talked about the continental
ones that one it was it in Madrid
they're superb.
B.
Oh they're tremendous. (Crystal, op.
cit p. 21)
The feeling is that Oh in B fits in the
category of communicative i11ocutionary acts labelled constatives (cfr. Bach and Harnish, 1979:
41) which express the speaker's belief and his in
tention that the hearer have or form a like belief . There seem to be many subcategories falling under this heading; therefore it is to be
specified which subcategory the example I am considering goes in. Oh in B's utterance clearly indicates that the speaker has just found out that
the information received is significant, i.e is
true and ipso facto he recognises the hearer's
(C) intention for him to confirm his proposition.
Consequently Oh in B is rather confirmative, a
subcategory of the constatives. This is even justified by the use of adjectives of degree by both
speakers: superb and tremendous.
On the contrary, if the expression was
uttered on a falling-rising tone, Oh would indi-
55
cate that the speaker is disputing the claim
made by the other interactant. However, this possibility is excluded in the present situation.
Had it been in the speaker’s mind, i.e. S he would
have supposedly repeated the same adjective:
superb to show and clarify his situation.
A further evidence in support of our
claim can be seen in this sentence:
Oh, President Reagan has been shot.
Like the above example, this utterance should be
treated as constative. Their possible difference
consists in the value offered to the utterance
with respect to intonation and attitude of the
add ressee.
Leaving apart its confirmatory aspect in
case of doubt, the utterance would be at one level identified as an act of informing and at the
other as an act of condoling. The latter illocutionary act constitutes a subdivision of the expressives, category of communicative illocution.
One of the characteristics of condoling is to say
that we sympathize with a person; that is, we feel
sorry for what happened to him. But the primary
social function of condoling seems to be intended
to alleviate the addressee's pains or sufferings.
In the context under consideration, the speaker
expresses regret for not having been informed
that some misfortune happened to President Reagan.
In other words the speaker is deeply affected.
2.2. AH
Although the interjection Ah in essence,
presents a close relationship with Oh we hope to
to demonstrate innthe following lines that the farmer
still has its own meanings. As was pointed out in
the introductory part Ah is said to be used to indicate satisfaction or recognition. Illustration
of this may be noted in this exchange below:
56
A. Yes Oh yes because the when they fed
the pigs they all had to stand well
back andthey were allowed to take
the buckets but they weren't allowed
to get near the pigs.
B. AH
(Crystal et al. p. 41)
It is unquestionable that the speaker in
uttering Ah associates A's proposition (i.e children are positively forbidden to qet near the
pigs) with her own experience. For after she had
uttered Ah substantiated it with a similar situation:
B. ...we took some children on a visit
to er Enfields environmental study
centre the other day and they have
various animals around there one of
which is a pig -er Pinky Pinky that's
right and all the children stood
round the outside etc... (p. 41)
Hence: Ah stands for a proposition whose content
is intended to recognise A's proposition. In
other words, in uttering Ah, B has found out
that A's proposition is true and therefore suscribes to it. There would be no doubt to match
here recognition of a statement or proposition
with the speech function "agreeing". Ah will
express satisfaction in the case the speaker
thinks it is good for something to happen or the
happening of some event will be significant because of some reason which is hidden in the
pragmatic universe of two speakers engaged in
genuine discourse or communication. Examples
which can support this argument abound; however
we feel that it is of little use to multiply
instances for fear of being anecdotical. The
most important point to keep in mind is that
there seems to be some systematic relationship
between these interjections in that they nearly
perform the same kinds of illocutionary acts.
In spite of this fact, another significant semantic aspect to consider emerges, as far as Ah
57
is concerned: used sentence-initially, Ah appears to be used when the speaker has momentarily forgotten the matter he was talking about
which he remembers at last; it may also be used
when the speaker finds out something for the
first time, say in a newspaper or a book or in
the thick of a discussion. The same view is
expressed by James ( 1 972), note 4).
2.3. WELL
This interjection, unlike Oh and Ah discussed above presents interesting dimensions
which require a careful attention.
Crystal et al. (1975:101) state that
"the primary use of this word is initially in
utterances within discourse." 'Is such it has
three distinct pronunciations and meanings:
(1) slowly said, drawled, with a falling-rising or rising tone, it implies reservation or doubt;
(2) quickly said and in a clipped manner, well leads to an impression of abruptness,
impatience or business-like attitude and finally
(3) drawled with a level tone, well
appears to be an exponent of hesitation, indicating indecision etc. ..They also mention that it
may occur sentence-internally. In this use its
meaning does not differ from other hesitation
operators I referred to previously.
Although not exhaustive in their analysis, they have laid down some fundamentals which
can serve as the basis of the meaning of the
word well.
So well is to be first of all regarded
as a connector which enables the speaker to fit
in his expression or utterance in a given situation. To put it another way, the speaker reacts
58
to that situation as result of some foregoing
action by saying: well P. And it is from this
angle that well ranges itself with interjections.
Secondly by uttering well, the speaker seems to
do two things:
(1) express his point of view and,
(2) communicate it to the hearer so that
the hearer suscribes to it.
A look at a few examples extracted from
spoken discourse will throw some light upon these
considerations.
A. Well what's the failure with the football?
(Crystal and Davy, 1975).
The superficial syntactic structure of
this sentence shows that A's utterance is a question. The question is prefaced with well.
The use of well in A's question is directly connected with a situation which has previously occurred during the exchange that took
place between A and B. The situation is that B
has been complaining about the poor standards in
football. Suddenly A gets interested in the topic
and says well which has been said with a rising
tone --intonation pattern inherent to any question --tn make B understand that the statement he
is making is incomplete, insufficient and unclear
It needs substantiation. In other words the speaker is impatient to know the reasons for the deterioration of football. I think that it would be
interesting to point out some difference that may
exist between a question prefaced with well and
one which is not. Compare then:
A1Well what's the failure with the football?
A2What s the failure with the football?
The major difference between these questions
59
lies in the presupposition the speaker may be
making. Quite clearly, the questioner A1 and the
responder B1 are assumed to share the same pragmatic universe. By asking his question A1 knows
and believes that the hearer (in this context
the possible responder B1) knows the answer and
is ready to furnish the questioner with it. The
assumption we are making is justified by the use
of well which, in the situation under consideration, refers to some previous point which touched
upon sport. Whereas, the questioner A2 poses his
question innocently with the hope of receiving
a satisfactory answer. The answer may be negative
in the case the question has not been put to the
"approppriate"(right) person.
Well is characteristically used in
answers to questions. As for the conditions under
which an answer may be prefaced by well the
reader might care to read Lakoff, R (1973). In
any case, the general meaning that is given to
well in such uses is incompletion of the information sought by the questioner. The responder
refrains from giving the complete information for
some reason (may be due to ignorance, mood, not
entitled to do so, fear, etc...in short some (un)
known external factors acting directly or indirectly upon him.)
Consider again, an exchange from the
same dialogue:
C. ...in what way have conditions deteriorated, Gerry?
B. Well the grounds are scruffier than
they used to be.
(Crystal et al. op. cit. p. 20).
Uttered on a falling-rising tone (tone 4) well
indicates that the speaker fears to "spill the
beans" going around this matter, but offers the
superficial aspect of the problem to the questio
ner. Hence the attitude of reservation alluded
to earlier by Crystal and Davy (1975). And well
-
60
would be paraphrased as "I'm sorry or I'm afraid
I'm not entitled to supply the information necessary for you to understand the whole situation
however here are some facts you might keep in
mind". Generally, in these conditions the questioner obtains the approximate correct answer
only by deduction, which is a device to help him
to construct a global idea about the "so-called"
poor conditions.On the other side if the speaker
i.e B says well with low pretonic rising tone
(tone 3 in Halliday's terminology), I suspect
that it will considerably affect the rest of the
utterance as far as the meaning is concerned.
Though giving only a part of the information the
speaker will tend to express his view of the information as being unimportant.
As has been stated before, there is another type of well which the speaker says as he
expresses his point of view. An example has been
taken from John Mortimer's "What Shall We Tell
Caroline?"
Tony: Look, Headmaster, this shock I was
referring to, it's made me think
- well I feel we shall have to
face things they are at very long
last. Now I know this business
has been a source of considerable
interest and excitement to us all
over a long period of years. It's
kept us going as you might say,
when the results of the squash
rackets competition and the state
of the weather and the suspicion
about who pinched the nail brush
off the chain in the downstairs
loo have been powerless to quicken
the pulse. But .it's gone too far,
you know - we should never have
started it. (Scene 2, p. 89).
The passage is certainly se1f-explanatory. The statement Tony is making is enclosed
61
between two dashes. Tony opens up his statement
with a well which, we assume, has been said
slowly with a falling-rising intonation, after
the speaker has gathered his thoughts and made a
deliberation about what he was going to say.
So far, I have discussed then some general trends about the meaning of well as it is
used sentence-initially . Let us turn now to well
which stands alone in a given piece of discourse.
To distinguish it from the other usages, I will
refer to it as well3. So, the data I have examined for the present study have shown that unlike
well1 (the one preceding an utterance) and well2
functioning as an hesitation operator, i. e
used sentence-internally) , well3 would normally
correspond to a deep structure sentence in which
the speaker makes use of an appropriate performa
tive verb depending upon tne situation he is involved in. More explicitly, the deep structure
sentence the speaker might come up with could
have the form of "I say that. ..or I order that..."
It is worth noting at this point, one important
feature of well3. It is generally followed by a
question mark wnich indicates a rising intonation
to be adopted by the speaker.
So, for example well in the dialogue
below:
Tony:l couldn'tfor the life of me remem
ber what it wa s. But if you don't
tell children anything...
Arthur: Well? (Mortimer, ibidem p. 89)
would certainly represent something paraphrasable
like: "I order that you supply further information for a better understanding" or "I ask/invite
you to supply further information for a better
understanding. These performatives which all
belong to the category of directives make prominent the speaker's intention toward some prospective action to be taken by the nearer. There is
however a difference between ask and invite on
one side and on the other order, although the
62
apparent goal to achieve remains the same. The
former are requestives and the latter is part of
the requirements category (cfr. Bach and Harnish,
op. cit.). All in all, the decision to be made
will depend upon the relationships between the
speaker and the hearer. The assumption is that
Arthur, considering his rank (headmaster) orders
that Tony - in virtue of his authority over himclarify the situation he has just created. The
i11ocutionary act will be performed only if Tony
understands Arthur's intention in saying Well?
The last point to make about well concerns its phatic function. Well in its pha t i c
function aims at maintaing contact or communication between interactants. This use is very common in daily speech. Take for example the following exchange:
A. ...we were in the thick what is called Paki bashing Did you qet that in
Cyprus Did you hear about it.
B. ...No well there are well I yes I
read about it in the newspapers.
The dialogue proves that B has no idea about Paki bashing, which is however confirmed in his
response. But he keeps talking, using well continually while he is searching for somethinq to
complete his sentence with or simply he uses it
as a device to fill in time and perhaps handle
discontrriuity.
3. CONCLUSION
The analysis of Oh, Ah and Well has
shown that interjections have a meaning potential
which should be the major concern of linguists
and philosophers interested in the phenomena of
any human language Denaviour. I have also shown
that to account for the different meanings, one
should take into consideration a couple of factors such as stress, intonation, facial expres-
63
sions and relationships between the speaker and
the hearer. And these meanings are always contextbound. Contexts need to be specified every time
an illocutionary act is to be performed in accordance with the speaker's intentions. Examples
provided have borne evidence of this fact and it
has been demonstrated that interjections convey
speech functions such as agreeing, disagreeing,
condoling, confirming, requesting, ordering, to
mention but a few. The analysis has permitted us,
however to note that interjections are characterised by three important features: referentiality,
performativity and unpredictability.
(1) Interjections are referential in
that they refer the speaker/hearer to some part
of the preceding utterance. Failure to use an
interjection with reference to some previous situation, the speaker generally breaks up a fundamental rule of discourse which Sirdar-Iskandar
(1980:182) calls "grammatica1ite pragmatique."
(2) Interjections are performative in
that they are represented in deep structures by
an hypersentence containing one of the performative verbs: say, state, order, etc.
(3) Interjections are unpredictable in
that no one is able to state clearly when Oh, Ah
and Well can be used appropriately. Their use
is bound to the topic.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BACH, K. and R.H. HARNISH (1979). Linguistics communication and speech acts. The MIT Press
CRYSTAL, D. and D. DAVY (1975) Advanced conversational English. Longman.
HALLIDAY, M.A.K. (1970). A course in spoken english: Intonation. O.U.P. London.
James, D. (1972). "Some aspects of the syntax
and semantics of Interjections." C.L.S
--------(1974). "Another look at, say, some grammatical constraints on, oh, interjections
and hesitations". C.L.S.
LAKOFF, R. (1973). "Questionable answers and answerable questions" in Papers in Linguistics in Honor of Henry and Renee Kahane.
U.I.P.
SEARLE, J. (1969) Speech Acts. C.U.P.
SIRDAR-ISKANDAR (1980) "Eh bien le russe lui a donné cent francs" in DUCROT, O. et al. Les
mots du discours. Editions de Minuit.